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At the bus station in Durham, North Carolinahttp://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa1998006256/PP/
teacher’s guideprimary source set
Jim Crow and SegregationFor more than a century after the Civil War, a system of laws and practices denied full freedom and citizenship to African Americans, segregating nearly all aspects of public life.
Historical Background
In 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation symbolically
established a national intent to eradicate slavery
in the United States. Decades of state and federal
legislation around civil rights followed. In January
of 1865, the 13th amendment to the Constitution
officially abolished slavery in this country, while the
14th amendment, passed in 1866, set forth three
principles:
• All persons born or naturalized in the U.S. were
citizens for the nation and no state could make
or enforce any law that would abridge their
rights of citizenship.
• No state could deny any person of life, liberty,
or property without due process of law.
• No state could deny any person equal protection
of the laws.
Finally, the 15th amendment, passed in 1869,
outlawed the denial of voting rights due to race,
color, or past servitude.
However, immediately after the Civil War ended,
some states began imposing restrictions on the
daily lives of African Americans, whether they were
survivors of slavery or had always been free. By the
end of the 19th century, laws or informal practices
that required that African Americans be segregated
from whites were often called Jim Crow practices,
believed to be a reference to a minstrel-show song,
“Jump Jim Crow.”
With the Compromise of 1877, political power was
returned to Southern whites in nearly every state
of the former Confederacy. The federal government
abandoned attempts to enforce the 14th and 15th
amendments in many parts of the country. By 1890,
when Mississippi added a disfranchisement provision
to its state constitution, the legalization of Jim Crow
had begun.
Jim Crow was not enacted as a universal, written law
of the land. Instead, a patchwork of state and local
laws, codes, and agreements enforced segregation
to different degrees and in different ways across
the nation. In many towns and cities, ordinances
designated white and black neighborhoods, while
in others covenants and unwritten agreements
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among real estate interests maintained residential
segregation. African Americans were denied the right
to vote by onerous poll taxes, unfairly applied tests,
and other unjust barriers. The signs we associate
today with Jim Crow – “Whites Only,” “Colored”–
appeared at bus stations, water fountains and rest
rooms, as well as at the entrances and exits to
public buildings. Hotels, movie theaters, arenas,
night clubs, restaurants, churches, hospitals, and
schools were segregated, and interracial marriages
outlawed. Segregation was not limited to African
Americans, but often applied to other non-white
Americans.
Segregation was often maintained by uniformed law
enforcement. In other instances, it was enforced
by armed white mobs and violent attacks by
anonymous vigilantes. African Americans resisted
these pervasive restrictions using many different
strategies, from public advocacy and political
activism to individual self-defense and attempts to
escape to a better life. In the century following the
end of Reconstruction, millions of African Americans
moved away from the South in what became known
as the Great Migration, only to discover that they
faced discrimination in the northern states.
In the middle of the
twentieth century,
generations of resistance
to segregation
culminated in the Civil
Rights movement, in
which African Americans
launched widespread
demonstrations and
other public protests
to demand the rights
and protections provided by the Constitution. As a
result, a series of landmark court cases and new
legislation in the 1950s and 60s, including the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act
of 1965, relegated many of the Jim Crow laws and
practices of the previous century to the dustbin
of history. The impact of a century of segregation
can still be felt today, and, although the specific
segregation policies of the 19th and 20th centuries
have been discredited, voices calling for equal rights
for all can still be heard today.
Civil rights march on Washington, D.C.http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2003654393/
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Suggestions for Teachers
Select one primary source that reflects racial segregation and ask your students to consider segregation from
multiple perspectives. How would they react if they were excluded? How would they feel if they were
not excluded? What would they do if they were asked to enforce the rule or law?
Ask students to analyze several primary sources that express or illustrate views in favor of Jim Crow segregation.
What are some of the ways that proponents of segregation make it sound like a benefit -- either to whites, to
African Americans, or to both? Invite them to explore what is meant by the term “separate but equal.” and how
is this concept related to the arguments?
Ask students to compare and contrast several primary sources that express or illustrate opposition to Jim Crow
segregation. What were some of the different justifications given for abolishing Jim Crow? What different
methods – or approaches – of opposition can you identify? Brainstorm other forms of protest not shown in
the primary sources and look for examples in either historical collections or the media of today.
Additional Resources
“With and Even Hand”: Brown v. Board at Fifty
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/brown/
Photographs of Signs Enforcing Racial Discrimination
http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/list/085_disc.html
African American Photos for the Paris Exposition of 1900
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/anedub/
Civil Rights Act of 1964: A Long Struggle for Freedom
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/civil-rights-act/
loc.gov/teachers
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Primary Sources with Citations
Deming, Leonard. “Jim Crow.” Song sheet. Boston: L. Deming, n.d. From Library of Congress,
America Singing: Nineteenth-Century Song Sheets.
http://www.loc.gov/item/amss000659/
Negroes to Ride in City Railway Passenger Cars! Broadside. Philadelphia: 1868. From Library
of Congress, An American Time Capsule: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed
Ephemera.
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.rbc/rbpe.15902600
United States Congress. “An Act to Protect All Citizens in their Civil and Legal Rights.” Statutes
at Large. 43rd Congress, 2nd Session, Volume 18, Part 3. 1 March 1875. From Library of
Congress, A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and
Debates, 1774-1875.
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi- bin/ampage?collId=llsl&fileName=022/llsl022.db&recNum=364
Washington, Booker T. Atlanta Exposition Speech, September 18, 1895. Manuscript. From
Library of Congress, African American Odyssey.
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=ody_mssmisc&fileName=ody/ody0605/ody0605page.
db&recNum=0
United States Census office. Statistical atlas of the United States, based upon the results of
the eleventh census. Map. Washington: Govt. print. off., 1898. From Library of Congress,
Geography and Map Division.
http://www.loc.gov/resource/g3701gm.gct00010/?sp=26
To the Colored Men of Voting Age in the Southern States. Philadelphia: Press of E.A.
Wright, [190-?]. From Library of Congress, From Slavery to Freedom: The African-American
Pamphlet Collection, 1824-1909.
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/rbaapcbib:@field(NUMBER+@od1(rbaapc+33200))
Rev. Brooks, Walter H., D.D. “The ‘Jim Crow’ Car.” Richmond Planet. 15 September 1900.
From Library of Congress, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers.
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84025841/1900-09-15/ed-1/seq-8/
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Hall, Chas. E. ”Prof. William H.H. Hart...arrested under the 'Jim Crow' law,” The
Appeal. 12 November 1904. From Library of Congress, Chronicling America: Historic
American Newspapers.
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83016810/1904-11-12/ed-1/seq-4/
Erhart. For the Sunny South. An Airship with a “Jim Crow” trailer. Illustration. Keppler &
Schwarzmann, 26 February 1913. From Library of Congress Prints and Photgraphs Online
Catalog.
http://loc.gov/pictures/item/2002720354/
Ferris, Glen. “Wants ‘Jim Crow’ Law All Over the United States.” The Washington Times.
22 February 1915. From Library of Congress, Chronicling America: Historic American
Newspapers.
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026749/1915-02-22/ed-1/seq-6/
“Fighting Miscegenation.” Cayton’s Weekly 08 May 1920. From Library of Congress:
Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers.
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn87093353/1920-05-08/ed-1/seq-1/
Wolcott, Marion Post, photographer. “Negro going in colored entrance of movie house on
Saturday afternoon, Belzoni, Mississippi Delta, Mississippi.” Photograph. 1939 Oct.?. From
Library of Congress, America from the Great Depression to World War II: Black–and-White
Photographs from FSA-OWI, 1935-1945.
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa1998013484/pp/
Delano, Jack, photographer. “At the bus station in Durham, North Carolina.” Photograph.
1940 May. From Library of Congress, Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information
Black-and-White Negatives.
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/cph.3c25806/
Delano, Jack, photographer. “A cafe near the tobacco market, Durham, North Carolina.”
Photograph. 1940 May. From Library of Congress, America from the Great Depression to
World War II: Black–and-White Photographs from FSA-OWI, 1935-1945.
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa1998006213/PP/
loc.gov/teachers
6 loc.gov/teachers
Trikosko, Marion S., photographer. “Demonstrators marching in the street holding signs during
the March on Washington, 1963.” Photograph. 1963 Aug. 28. From Library of Congress:
Prints and Photographs Division.
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2013647400/
“Young boys harrassing the Baker family, the first African American family to move into the
all white Delmar Village neighborhood of Folcroft, Pennsylvania.” 1963 Aug 30. Photograph.
From Library of Congress: Prints and Photographs Division.
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/99402534/
DeMarsico, Dick, photographer. “African American children on way to PS204, 82nd Street
and 15th Avenue, pass mothers protesting the busing of children to achieve integration.”
1965 September 13. Photograph. From Library of Congress: Prints and Photographs Division.
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2004670162/
“Gwendolyn M. Patton oral history interview conducted by Joseph Mosnier in Montgomery,
Alabama, 2011-06-01.” Film. From Library of Congress: Civil Rights History Project collection.
http://www.loc.gov/item/afc2010039_crhp0020/